


all those endearing young charms

by firstaudrina



Category: Little Women (2019)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: “I’ve been thinking.” Laurie’s voice is suddenly at Amy's shoulder. “About genius.”
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Amy March
Comments: 16
Kudos: 176





	all those endearing young charms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [earnmysong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earnmysong/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on tumblr. I imagine this is set between their scene at the studio where she gives up painting and the argument at the park where Laurie tells Amy not to marry Fred.

“I’ve been thinking.” Laurie’s voice is suddenly at her shoulder. “About genius.”

Amy starts, her brush splotching crimson paint outside of its careful boundary, and then she frowns. She’s been working on his portrait on and off since he’s been in Paris but she regrets it; too much of her mind is taken up with Laurie, sketching him and rendering him in oils, looking at his face as she brings it to life in paint. Hearing him suddenly speak when she’d been so absorbed in his image had been what startled her — it was as though he’d come out of the canvas, her own Galatea. 

“That makes one of us,” Amy says, before she goes about fixing her mistake. She blots out the red with impatient gestures, angry at the muddled stain left behind.

“Now I know that’s a lie.” She can hear his smile but doesn’t look to see it. “Amy March thinks of nothing but genius, her own and others’. Who has it and who doesn’t.”

“Don’t purport to know anything about what Amy March thinks.” She ought to paint horns and a tail on him, for accuracy. “I’m just a lovely little socialite who likes to pick up a paintbrush now and then.” 

“If you persist in lying to me so egregiously all the time, I’m going to write to your mother and tell her that her youngest daughter has fallen into a pit of vile falsehoods abroad —”

Without looking, Amy reaches back to swipe a streak of red across his spluttering face, then turns to see she caught him across the top of his lip. She smothers a laugh. “There. That’s better than that pathetic thing you were trying to cultivate.” 

“You do such work to improve me,” he says, but he’s far from annoyed. The look in his eyes is too much to be born, so Amy must return to her canvas — only he’s there too, so she rises to wash out her brushes instead.

Everything about him bothers her. Mixing the right murky green for his eyes, contrasting the rich black-brown of his hair against his fair cheek. All of it squandered on him. It would be one thing if he were actually writing that opera like he always claims to be, but every time she gets him near a piano, he ends up trilling some silly little number at her instead — “Aura Lee,” or “How Can I Leave Thee.” 

When she doesn’t answer, Laurie continues, “So I’ve decided to return the favor.”

Amy laughs outright and says nothing.

“I think you will find your genius,” he adds. “I’m willing to put money on it.”

Her response is more subdued, but no less amused; she nearly snorts, but maintains her manners enough to subvert it. “Oh?”

“Yes. I’m a betting man these days.”

“ _These_ days, please. J—” Her sister’s name is swallowed before it can be said. “I have it on good authority that you spent most of your college years a betting man. Has anything changed?”

“Why, now I’m betting on you.”

Amy feels a prickle up her spine and along her shoulders but blames it on anything she can think of — a corset too tightly laced, the wool of her jacket through the chemise, the warmth of the room. “What are the terms?”

“I expect to see something exceptional out of you in — oh, say, ten years.” 

“Ten years?”

“Us gentleman of leisure understand the need for an expansive timeframe.” 

“So you’re leaving plenty of space for gambling and drunkenness and scandalously unbuttoned collars, then. Who will support my family in that time?”

“You don’t have to take the whole ten years to do it.”

“You still haven’t told me the terms.”

“You’re very business-minded, Amy March. At the end, if I’m right, I get to keep your masterpiece.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t intend to be.” He stands out of his cocksure sprawl, all arms in billowing sleeves and untied cravat, to better look at her unfinished portrait. “This could be it.”

Amy does snort then. “If my artistic education culminates in a picture of you, then all of Aunt March’s money will have been sorely wasted.”

Laurie mock-gasps, hand over his head. “You’re very cutting.”

“I don’t like to be made fun of.”

“I’m offended you think I’m speaking in jest. I couldn’t be more sober or serious.”

But his face tells another story, one that he lets slip more and more every day: the small smile, the big eyes, all his angularity given over to softness. Amy does not want to be his latest joke, a passing fad or amusement; a consolation for a broken heart, an appealing diversion for a wayward wanderer. She wants him to mean it or stop it.

And anyway, it’s impossible to take him seriously with that stroke of red paint still across his face. She throws one of her rags at him.

“Make yourself presentable,” she says. “And stop talking nonsense.” 

For a moment, just one, Laurie seems like he’s going to say something else — like there are words on the tip of his tongue — but perhaps some trepidation or even panic shows in Amy, because instead he only smiles. “You’re right,” he says. “I’ll stop. But the offer stands.”

Amy doesn’t know what she expected, but she’s disappointed, then angry she’s disappointed, then angry that she’s angry. Her face reveals little of it. “And I’ll ask Father Christmas for a new easel, too.”

He laughs. Whatever was in the air is gone.


End file.
